ABSTRACT
In 1976 the world of French geography was shaken by two publications from the experimental university at Vincennes, renowned focus for post-Marxist and anarchist thinking. The two texts were the first issue of the enigmatically named journal Hérodote, and Yves Lacoste’s La géographie, ça sert, d’abord, à faire la guerre (Lacoste 1976a). Lacoste’s book, in the pocket-sized edition and distinctive blue cover of the Petite Collection Maspero (which specialized in leftist analyses), was seen by many as a revolutionary manifesto for geography, comparable to Mao’s ‘little red book’. The historian of French geography Numa Broc wrote that ‘the University of Vincennes is launching a flame-thrower (literally ‘fire-ship’, brûlot) against the wellraked flower-beds of university geography’ (Bro, 1976). The present writer remembers being regaled at a conference at Montpellier in 1978 with the tale of these militants at Vincennes and being shown the explosive tracts, an occasion which started a long-term following of the group’s work.
